


Woke Up New

by Sossity



Category: Cowboy Bebop (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Episode Fix-It: The Real Folk Blues, Fix-It, Multi, Past Julia/Vicious, Past Spike/Julia - Freeform, Possible Faye/Julia if you squint, Spoilers, You don't have to squint hard tbh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-14
Updated: 2020-05-30
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:14:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 19,889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24174952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sossity/pseuds/Sossity
Summary: Faye changed her mind, jumped back into Julia's car, and everything just sorta snowballed from there...
Comments: 4
Kudos: 15





	1. you won't set the kids on fire (but I might)

**Author's Note:**

> So I recently binged the series and as much as I loved every single bit of it, my fingers slipped and I kind of ended up making an AU for the ending. If you haven't finished the series, you REALLY don't want to read this! This fic starts at about 13:50 into episode 25: The Real Folk Blues part 1, where Julia drops Faye back off at her ship. Everything before that moment took place as written. Thank you for reading. :)

"I'm glad I met you, Faye."

"Same here." Faye got out of the cherry red sports car. She looked one more time at Julia, fingers lingering on the door. "Uh...have I met you somewhere before?" Not the smartest thing she ever said. Maybe she just didn't want the conversation to be over. 

Julia visibly hesitated. She pulled her sunglasses out from her coat without looking back at Faye. "If you see Spike again...tell him I'll be waiting for him there."

Faye gasped, a hundred things racing through her mind. 

Julia finally met her eye, possibly mistaking her silence for confusion. "That's it. He'll know what I me--"

_Nope. Too little too late, sister._ Faye was already seeing red. This lady might have been expecting some shrinking violet who would just stand there in shock before running back to Spike, but she expected wrong. Even as Julia was lifting her foot off the brake, Faye was already vaulting back into the car she just left.

Julia swerved. "What are you _doing_?!" 

"So you need a bounty hunter, but _I'm not good enough_ , huh?! It has to be Spike, huh? Of _course_ it has to be Spike! Why does _he_ get to have all the fun?"

"What? No! That's not why I--gah! Are you _crazy_? Get out of my car!" 

"No! Not until you admit I'm as good a bounty hunter as he is!"

"I don't c--" Julia bit off the word and swore instead. "You know what? Fine!" She wrestled the car back under control. "You want to help? You _get_ to help!" 

***

"There was a woman. First time I'd found someone who was truly alive--at least, that's what I thought. She was...the part of me I'd lost somewhere along the way. The part that was missing. That I'd been _longing_ for."

Jet turned to look at him, but Spike was done talking and just stared silently out the window, faraway little smile on his face. Jet struggled for words for a little while. Knew it was hard for Spike to open up like this. But he also knew it was always easier when it was just the two of them like this. He turned back and watched the view.

Spike got up eventually and wandered off.

"***

"I met Vicious when we were both teenagers." The car slid downtown, and Julia broke the silence. "He wasn't calling himself Vicious back then. Harold. Harry. No one names their kid Vicious. But he hated it even back then. Gave himself a new nickname and made everybody switch to it." She paused like she expected Faye to have something to say. But after a moment of silence, she continued as if she didn't totally realize she was still talking. "He was _beautiful_. I mean, he _shone_. He was so smart, sometimes it felt like he knew everything in the world...but he was never kind." Another pause until the words came again. "Never. Not even back then. There was this nest of squirrels outside his window and he used to..." She trailed off again and shook her head. "Anyway. He joined the syndicate, I dropped out of school, you know the story. My parents weren't happy, but...he was going to take care of me, right?"

Faye stayed uncharacteristically silent. She kept trying out words in her head, but none of them fit. _Yeah, I know what you mean, I had my con artist too..._ She discarded them all. They turned down a side street.

"And you're still just a teenager, right? And you're in _love_ , and it's _romantic_. And then somewhere along the line, you realize you're just another squirrel."

The gears clashed as she downshifted into first.

"You've always been the damn squirrel. You've just been too young and blind and in love to see it."

Faye shut her eyes. 

Five minutes of silence later, Julia turned right down another intersection. "I need to get some things before we go."

"Okay." Faye's voice came out quieter than she intended it to be.

"And _you_ can contact Spike."

***

Annie sat behind the counter with a magazine open in front of her. She had the radio on and the door ajar slightly. The store needed the fresh air. Smelled like rain was coming.

The bell hanging on the door jingled. She glanced up long enough to take in the two men in expensive black suits that screamed Syndicate, then quickly looked back down again. Nothing to worry about. The store was deep in Red Dragon territory. This happened all the time. They were looking for bullets, smokes, or candy. Nothing out of the ordinary.

Footsteps retreated slowly and carefully to the back of the store. She kept her eyes firmly fixed on the smiling model in her magazine and tried to control each breath; tried to make it sound like normal, like there was nothing wrong here. Everything was fine. She was calm. Everyone was calm. In a minute, they'd ask for a couple of packs of cigarettes, and she'd ring 'em up, and they'd go away. 

She turned the page slowly and carefully without reading any of the text. She listened as they slowly made their way through the store, locating them with her ears as they moved.

One of them lingered in an aisle and a few seconds later a customer walked briskly out without buying anything. 

So what if there were rumors? So what if the rumors might have even been true? _So what_ if Vicious had tried to pull off a coup, and failed, and was now rotting in some lost cellar somewhere? So what if rumor had it that the Syndicate was _mad_ and was now shooting everyone who ever smiled at him? So what if she sometimes threw those kids an extra pack of gum? _So what?_

If she didn't do the math they wouldn't see it on her face and everything would be fine...

One of them stepped up to the counter and tossed down a pack of ramen and some pork rinds. She breathed out. She reached out with the steadiest hand she could muster and started ringing him up. _See? You're just a crazy old lady who worries too much._ She even managed a (not visibly) relieved smile up at his face.

She heard the muffled bell of the front door and the sharp click of the lock.

***

"Look sharp, Spike! Your old friends are here for a visit!" 

Spike looked up from cleaning his guns and angled his head to call back to Jet. "What friends? What the hell do they want?"

"The old friends that put this bullet in my leg and they're here to deliver a dang singing telegram!" 

The ship shook from an explosion and Spike's brain finally lit up. He carefully put down the bits of gun in his hands and ran for the _Swordfish_. 

Jet heard Spike's shoes clanging down the corridor and breathed a sigh of relief. _Finally got his head out of the clouds_ , he thought to himself. _Do him good to take out some anger on these goons, too._

A light on his instrument board flicked on and Spike's voice filtered through. "Ready to go, Jet!"

"Hold on a minute!" He pulled the _Bebop_ away from a flurry of incoming missiles and punched the bay doors open. "Go!"

The _Swordfish_ blew out of the main ship straight into a cloud of enemies firing on them. Spike course-corrected and rolled sideways, shooting two lines of holes into a fighter's wing as he sped away. He fired another burst into the cluster of ships, drawing their attention away from the less agile trawler. They might have been able to land shots on the Bebop, but the Swordfish danced through the sudden rain of gunfire and right through the center of the flock, taking down two and scattering the rest. "Hey Jet? I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure this is _our business_ now!"

Jet growled in answer and banked the ship away from the _Swordfish_ , trying to shake off some of the Syndicate. Several ships broke off from their attack and followed him. Jet bit off what might have been a louder yell as a double tremor ran through the ship.

"What was that?" 

"Nothing." Jet winced and rubbed his leg. It did _not_ like getting jarred like that. But the damned meat was just going to have to hurt. He couldn't spare it any attention now. He turned left and hoped it threw at least some of them off their aim.

Spike managed to pick off the two that were harrying the _Bebop_ , but had to break away as three more ships started firing at him. He swung the _Swordfish_ around and slid it sideways through another group of ships, surprising his pursuers enough to cause a collision. He let out a deep, controlled breath. _Like water_. He let everything but the battle temporarily fall out of his mind. 

***

"Okay, so where does _Spike_ come into all of this mess?" 

"It's complicated." Julia glanced in her rearview mirror. She didn't see anyone following her, but it was hard to say for sure. 

Faye chuckled. "I'm sure it is, honey."

Julia cast a glance sideways, trying to decide how to take that. She turned back to the road as she answered. "Lover. Friend. Knight in shining armor. Devil. Maniac. Attempted savior. Affair. Bait. Pick a card, any card."

Faye considered, then mimed pulling a card out of thin air. "Affair."

Julia shrugged. "I was with him at the same time as Vicious. We lied about it. Had to, if we didn't want to get ripped to pieces. Literally."

"Huh. I'm trying to picture Spike actually...you know, _with_ a woman." Faye paused. "Even on a date."

"Maybe he's changed." Julia shrugged again. "I know I have."

"Like, the most romantic thing I've ever seen him do was to _not_ try to steal someone's food for once."

"He brought me roses." Julia smiled, remembering. "He always brought me roses. He said that I made him feel alive again. He said he never understood how people could love the world until he met me."

"I once saw him sneeze really hard into his plate and then finish eating like nothing happened."

"I--" Julia stopped and wrinkled her nose at Faye. "Wait, really?"

Faye nodded and scrunched up her face in disgust. "It was one of those super gross gooey sneezes, too."

"...So, uh, anyway. He used to leave love notes at this one convenience store for me. The owner used to pass them along." She nodded as they passed the store only to pull into a parking lot further down the road. "So one, I want to get some supplies if I'm going to be on the run again for a while. Food and bullets and the like. And two, it's the...second perfect place to leave a message for him." 

Faye waited for Julia to get out of the car--she was not getting left behind--and then caught up with her. She shivered and pulled her arms tight against her chest. The rain that had been brewing for ages was finally starting to fall, and it was _cold_. "Okay, so what's the _first_ perfect place?"

Julia ducked a smile. "Who knows? You might still get to see it."

"Okay, _fine_ , mystery girl." She grinned and pulled another card from the air. "Devil."

Julia couldn't help but smile wider. There was just something about this woman that pulled it out of her. "Well...did he tell you that he was a rising star in the Red Dragon syndicate?"

"Uh, _no_." Faye stopped at the door of the convenience store. "But from what Gren told me...I guess it makes sense." She leaned against the plate glass window with her arms crossed. "So you and Vicious and Spike...all of you are so tangled up together." She said softly, _really looking_ at Julia.

"Yeah. It's a whole mess. I wish...hm." Julia frowned as she unsuccessfully tried the door. "Annie's _never_ closed this early in the day."

Faye turned to the window she was leaning on and peered between the blinds.

***

The _Swordfish_ took down three ships in close succession, then a fourth. There were only a few left. They divided themselves into two groups: the better pilots chased after Spike, and the slower fighters continued to bomb the bigger ship. 

Jet brushed sweat off his temple as yet another series of holes got blown into the hull. He'd lost track of how many that was, but it was going to take a hell of a repair job later. That is, if they managed to stay up in the sky. The battle looked like it was on the wane, but there was no point in getting cocky. He accelerated slightly, but the heavy fire continued.

Spike dodged between ships, one eye on the Bebop. He swung violently to one side and the two guided missiles behind him each found a new target. Two explosions, four ships left. They could do this. 

A loud bang echoed through the Bebop and an alarm rose from Jet's controls. "Damn it," he muttered to himself. Louder, he called out "Spike, I'm going to try and land!" 

"What?! Are you _crazy_?" One more down, three to go. "You'll be a sitting duck!" Spike swooped down and picked off another ship. Two left, and they were obviously getting tired. He swooped sideways in between them to draw their attention away from the trawler. 

Jet started angling the ship for an easy descent. Spike could take it from there. "Crazy? You know it. Always have been, always will." Right now he had a rapidly dwindling supply of air and the continued ability to float. One more shot and he might lose either. Or both. 

One left. Spike looked out of the corner of his eye. The big ship wasn't handling right, and they both knew it. "Shit."

"Yeah." 

***

Somewhere, a bird exploded and everything went to hell.


	2. I am on a lonely road and I am traveling

Somewhere else, a graveyard remained silent and empty in the rain.

***

"Shin. Do _not_ follow in your brother's footsteps." 

The words echoed around them both. A threat, a warning, and a slap to the face, all in one. Shin watched Vicious walk away down the corridor. It would be so easy to draw his gun. So easy to sink one, two, maybe three bullets into that back. To end it all right here and now. But it wouldn't be easy at all--Vicious would be expecting exactly that, and he would be killed before he even got off the first shot. It wasn't _entirely_ a trap, he knew. But the contempt and disregard rolled off Vicious in waves, just the same. Shin wasn't worth the _effort_ of a trap, said the curve of his new leader's neck. So he let his brother's gravest error continue unmolested. ...For now.

He turned and looked once more at the scene in the basement. Blood was everywhere. It was growing sticky and dark, and the men still inside were finding it uncomfortable to walk along the stringy new carpet. Bodies were being slowly cleared by the ones who had gunned them down. He let the scene burn itself into his eyes until the afterimage stayed even when he closed them. He turned, finally, and walked away. 

His brother had been a man of high passions. He was a man of true loyalty; of honor. Shin knew this as deeply as his lungs knew to take in air. And for his entire life, yes, Shin had followed him. He was the platonic ideal of a younger brother. Always tagging along behind, finding so much joy in the few moments he was welcomed into the group, only to be cast out again for being the annoying little kid. He followed him through school, into the Syndicate, through so much else in life. Until Lin swore his life to Vicious: an act that got him--and now, most of their trusted comrades--killed. 

No. He would no longer follow in his brother's footsteps. He _could_ not.

Back at his apartment, Shin took stock of everything he had. There wasn't much. Physical possessions had never mattered to him. Companionship had always gotten pushed to the side in favor of other priorities. But suddenly, after looking around the tiny, dimly lit space, with not much more than a bed and a microwave, it just looked...sad. Lonely. As if even the man who curated it felt that there was nothing of importance it could possibly contain.

All the same. He ate a small ready-made meal at a table that had never needed more than one chair. When he was finished, he balled up and threw the cardboard container away, stood, and took himself to the one bookcase in the apartment. He carefully considered the wall. He removed four books and two photograph albums, and stacked them on the floor. There was a small wall safe behind the shelf. He entered the combination. Inside was a small collection of personal and financial documents. The personal documents he left in place. The financial papers he stacked on top of the books. He took the only blank piece of paper he could find--half a ripped envelope--and wrote the words _For Hannah._ Lin's widow. He laid this carefully on top of the stack. 

Next, he divided the rest of the books in two, taking care over which item each girl would like best. When he was done, there were two more stacks. One with the note _For Omar_ held the majority of the books. Lin's son. He had a scientific bent to his mind and a bottomless thirst for knowledge. His family couldn't be more proud of him. The other stack was labeled _For Yoko_ and held the things he thought a four-year-old girl would most enjoy. Fairy tales, a music box, and the one stuffed giraffe he'd had since he was a boy and couldn't bear to part with. It didn't take him long. He rather wished it had.

He stood. And left to walk his own path.

***

"I don't know what you want! Spike's _dead_! He's been dead for years! I don't know what you want me to tell you!" Tears were running down Annie's face, now, but she looked otherwise composed. She'd been swearing that for about ten minutes now, and there was nothing they could say or beat out of her. 

It was...uncomfortable. He didn't like this. Didn't like _doing_ this. Felt wrong, somehow. This was the lady who'd ruffled his hair when he was too small to see over the counter. This was the lady who spotted him cash when his dad didn't send him with the right change, and he was too afraid to leave without smokes. And now he had her pressed up against the end cap of an aisle, one elbow against her collarbone and a gun pressed to her stomach. It made him squirm inside, in a way he wasn't ready to deal with.

Until some sixth sense he didn't know he had made him snap his head around to the front window and sent a jolt of electricity down his bones as he met two eyes framed by the blinds. His heart beat exactly twice before the bullet shattered the window and slammed into his chest, stopping it forever. 

The last thing he ever heard was Annie calling his name.

***

Faye dispatched the other asshole before he could even draw. "Why didn't you have your gun out?" She flicked the safety back on and reached through the broken glass and tattered blinds to unlock the door. "What kind of shitty thief _are_ you?" The old lady, presumably the owner, pressed her hands to her mouth and made a horrible noise as she stared at the dead bodies on the floor. Faye's footsteps crunched on shards of glass and other debris as she walked over to one of the men on the ground. She nudged him with her shoe. "Ugh, you probably had a bounty on you, too. Just my luck." She squatted down and started searching his pockets.

" _Fuck_ ," Julia breathed from the doorway.

***

The _Swordfish_ kept pace as the Bebop slowly, carefully, lowered itself down. Jet had lingered way too long finding the perfect spot, and Spike was just glad he was still able to make it through the atmosphere without burning up. That last asshole went down quick, but Spike wanted to keep one eye and a weapon out for anyone else who might be approaching.

The ship bellyflopped onto the ground with no grace. Spike managed to avoid most of the tidal wave of sand, but still got blown slightly off course. Easy enough to correct. 

The part where he had to enter the hangar at a 20-degree angle was also easy to correct for. And was totally fine. Probably. He scanned the horizon one more time for more ships, but they were utterly alone. For now. Fine. Good. The bay doors opened for him and closed successfully behind him. So that was working, at least. 

He got out of the ship. The floor was at the same angle. He took a few steps, getting his balance. "Jet?" He called out. No answer. 

He walked into the living room. "Jet?" The room was empty. Maybe he was already up and fixing things. 

He checked the galley next, though it wasn't likely that Jet's first move would be cooking. "Jet?" (And it totally wasn't an excuse to swipe a boiled egg.)

"Jet?" He looked into Jet's room. Nobody here, but Jet _did_ have a brand new window punched through the wall. And his bonsai trees were...well. Spike had once flown the Swordfish through the eye of a hurricane, and taken shelter in a nearby house. The aftermath looked something like this. He slipped his egg back into his pocket and spent a quiet few minutes putting the plants back onto the shelf and tossing broken branches and pottery into the trash. It still looked pretty bad. Spike winced and tried to prop up the sad trunk of the biggest little tree with his finger. It fell back down as soon as he took his hand away, attached only by a strip of bark.

He peeled his egg as he quickly poked his head into the stockroom. You never knew. "Jepfffh?" He called as he popped the entire egg into his mouth. Silence. ...Come to think of it, they probably should've secured more of this stuff down. That would've been a good idea. And he was pretty sure some of it was gone out the new door in the wall. Whatever was left looked like it had been shaken in a giant dice cup for way too long.

He saved the most likely for last. Jet was probably still at the controls, grumbling because he'd only managed to find the _second_ -best spot to land on all of Mars. And then Spike would walk in, and Jet would tell him some kind of weird story, and everything would be fine so then Spike could take back off and find the answers he was looking for... "Jet?"

"....Mm."

There was his voice. He must be concentrating on something. That must be it. Spike picked his way forward carefully--there was just as much stuff thrown around up here as everywhere else and the ship was still listing to the right. "Jet?" This time the big guy didn't answer. 

Jet was still in the pilot's seat. Spike grabbed onto the head rest for balance. The seat reclined comfortably, but Jet was still slouched over like he was pouting. "Hey, so, you have a new window in your..." He trailed off. Jet's eyes were still closed. He frowned, reached over and shook Jet's shoulder with one hand and leaned his left on the armrest. "Jet? Wake up? Jet?" 

...His left hand was wet. He picked it up quickly and looked down. Nothing on his hand. But the fabric of the chair was sodden with blood.

* * *

Somebody sat Annie down on her bench. She stared at the mess on her floor for what felt like a couple of seconds at most before somebody pressed a cup of tea into her hands and pulled a coat over her shoulders. She automatically took a sip and then stared some more. She blinked, and somebody had cleared away the bodies. She divided her staring then between the stain on the floor, the dark splatters on her endncap display, and the blanket-covered mound in the corner.

Vicious was out. Those two boys had told her so. He'd escaped and taken out the Elders. They'd only found out themselves halfway through trying to extract information from her. It was like he'd flipped a switch and they'd gotten...strange. Wilder. Different. Like an inexpert puppetmaster was jerking their strings hard to a sudden dangerous beat. ...Like they'd been almost as scared as she was. And she'd gone from playing a game of mental chess to fearing for her life. They had been that far out of control.

Her eyes found their way back to the boys' bodies for the thousandth time. Maybe they were well out of it. Maybe not. Probably not. Maybe she should see if her family had some place she could stay. She looked away. Julia and that other lady were discussing something in the corner, but she couldn't make her mind fit around it. _Those poor girls..._

***  
"Change of plans," Julia said, lighting a cigarette. She offered her lighter out to Faye. "I think we need to get out of here, and _fast_." 

"Yeah, I agree." Faye put down the cardboard box of goods she'd been gathering from inside the store and took the lighter. "I say we get back to our ship and head out to the _Bebop_. I'm sure Ed can get you some new documents. You can talk to Spike in person. And just..." she gestures with her cigarette. "Just...leave Mars behind for a while."

"What about Vicious?" 

"What _about_ him? Won't the Red Dragon take care of him?"

Julia cast her eyes down. "I guess you're right. It feels...no, you're right, they will. They _have_ to." She rubbed the side of her neck for a long minute and looked back up. "They must be watching this store. "

"Yeah. They might be watching my ship, too. Okay. That's fine. No, really, it's fine." She turned to rummage through her box. Out came a multicolored scarf, an oversized black t-shirt with the words ' I <3 Mars' on the front, and a pair of neon green leggings. "How good of a quick change artist do you think you'd be?" 

***

Spike found a half-empty bottle of whiskey under Faye's bed, a needle in the workbench where he cleaned his gun earlier, and thread in one of Jet's drawers. The bandages were in the lockbox at the foot of his own bed--he's the one who tended to need them most, after all. 

He heard something skittering in the stockroom as he went by, but he just slammed the door shut. There was a time and place for that kind of bullshit.

He dumped his haul onto the couch and swept everything off of the table. 

He thought for another minute, then went down to the Swordfish's berth and found a ball of twine. 

He went back upstairs to the bridge and stood beside Jet's chair. "How to do this..." he mused to himself. In the end, he just grabbed Jet by the armpits and hauled upward. Jet did not move easily. He threw himself into it and finally managed to slide Jet over the arm of the chair. Jet slumped, his entire body weight crashing into the man trying to extricate him. Spike lost the battle with his balance, sitting down hard on his own foot with the other guy lying on top of him. He grumbled and slid himself out from underneath. He was strong, sure, and light on his feet, but 300 pounds of ragdoll cowboy was an _ask_. 

Fine. Whatever. He lay down on his side next to Jet. He took a minute to fish a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket and light one. Then, cig clamped between his teeth, he reached behind himself and grabbed Jet's hands. He pulled Jet onto his side, right up against Spike's back, and wrapped Jet's arms around his shoulders. He pulled out the ball of twine and bound Jet's forearms together, not tight enough to leave marks. He cut the end of the amateur handcuffs with one of several knives he happened to have on his person, let the rest of the twine roll off under a table, then put the knife away. 

Spike took a deep breath and rolled onto his stomach, pulling Jet up onto his own back in one fluid motion. The sudden weight squashed Spike's face into the floor, crushing his cigarette. He spit it out sadly and struggled up onto his hands and knees. Then to his feet, hunched over like he was giving Jet a piggyback ride. A strange, drunken, lopsided piggyback with Jet's feet sliding along the floor behind them. Down the ladder was way worse. The ankle he'd twisted getting Jet out of his seat threatened to give way, but just barely held. 

He finally dragged them both into the living room, almost falling down the short set of stairs to the common area. He heard Jet's comm ringing, but this was a _very bad time_. Stupid scammers always knew, somehow. He cut the twine holding Jet's arms and slowly let him down onto the table. He immediately started to slide off; nothing was level right now. Spike grabbed him and held him on. He pushed the table up against the couch to brace Jet and then let go again. That seemed to do the trick. Then, and only then, did he notice the trail of blood droplets Jet had been leaving.

"Now," he muttered, and fished for the bottle of booze. He pulled the top off and took a good, long swig. He studied Jet. Judging from all the fresh blood soaked through that dressing and all over the floor (and basically everything else he'd brushed against on their trip downstairs, including Spike), he had torn his bullet wound back open at some point during the battle. And then, due to pain, blood loss, lack of air, or all the hysterical crying he must have been doing at the damage to his ship, he'd passed out. Spike was no doctor, so he couldn't say which. 

But in the end it was probably a way better thing for him that he was out right now. Spike took another drink. Then he set the bottle on the floor before grabbing a chair and sitting down. He pulled his knife out again and balanced it in his hand. He reached forward, cut the tie off the bandage, and gingerly gave it a tug. It wouldn't lift. Stuck down with blood, apparently. He reached for the bottle again. 

"Get a bucket of water and a rag." Jet's voice came so soft and slurred that Spike could barely understand him. "Soak 'em down good and they should come off. Then pass me that drink."

***

"Pick up, pick up..." Faye muttered under her breath in a sing-song. What could Jet _possibly_ be doing that was so important? Probably cooking or playing with those stupid plants of his. She hung up the phone with a cry of frustration and dialed Edward instead.

***

Ed is fishing! Fishing for little data bytes. Swimmy, swimmy little bytes with all their pretty colors and ones and zeroes. Some of them are in the shape of names, or companies, or games, or funny cat pictures...woop, here comes one swimming! It's swimming for Ed? Yes, it wants Ed! Ed peers at it. Iiiiiiit's Faye-Faye! Whoa! Ed clicks the button to answer and bounces up and down. "FAYE-FAAAAAYE!" Ed is so excited! Ed missed her lots.

"Uh...hey there, Ed." Faye-Faye looks like she swallowed an ice cream too fast. Poor Faye-Faye. She looks like that a lot sometimes. She must get _bad_ headaches. "I need a favor. Is Jet around?"

"Nope. Just Edward. And Ein!" Ed's bottom lip pooches out as Ed rocks back and forth. Oh yeah, Jet. Jet and Spike and Faye-Faye...and...and...Father-Person! Ed didn't think about anything but the noodly things for so _long_... 

Faye-Faye is now pinching the part of her nose that sticks out between her eyes and getting that little wrinkle she gets there sometimes. (But _boy_ Faye-Faye doesn't like it when Ed points that out! Ed's got to be _careful_ about that.) "Ugh, well, I still need that favor. Do you know where he's gone?" 

"Ed doesn't know! Ed wasn't watching Jet. Ed _should_ have been watching Jet." Ein barks in agreement. Ed frowns over at Ein. "You think Ed should have been watching too? Aww. Ed is sorry." Ed scratches Ein behind the ears--and lights up! Ed beams at Faye-Faye. "But Edward can find out!" Ed hums quietly while Ed gathers the school of swimmy, bitey fish and sends them scooting after the ship! Out through the waves of funny cat pictures and seismographs...Heeee, there it is! "Ed found it, Ed found, it, Edward found the _Bebop_!" Ed sings to Faye-Faye and sends her the coordinates. "It's sitting on the beach!"

"Huh?" Faye-Faye is looking at the coordinates and looking surprised again. "What are you doing _there_? This changes things..." 

"Ed's not--"

"Never mind. About that favor...I need two new passports set up for me and this other woman. I'm sending you her name and picture. Could you do that for me?"

"Sure!" Ed clickety clicks on the keyboard and starts swirling the data together. Hums a little more. Faye-Faye talks to someone else while Ed works. It...reminds Ed of...of...the _Bebop_. Huh. Okay. Ed finishes and presses send. "Here you go!"

"That...that was fast."

"You're welcome!" 

"Okay. Got it. Um. Edward, can you do one more thing for me?" 

"Sure!"

Faye-Faye gets that look on her face, the one where she's about to do something nice. You know, the one that makes her look like she put a barbed frog in her mouth? Then Faye-Faye lets out a sigh but doesn't take the frog out. "Look after Jet real good, will you?"

"Um. Okay."

Faye-Faye hangs up. Huh. Edward looks around. The room is full of blinky, flashy lights and people on computers and other people standing around all frowny and trying to make everybody else as worried as they are. Ed stands up and tucks the computer under Ed's arm. Ein barks and gets up too, looking excited. 

"Guess we're going to have to find a way off Jupiter, huh?"

***

The lighter flicked. Then again. On the third spark, it finally caught. But instead of the usual cigarette, a thumb and forefinger gingerly held a sewing needle in the center of the flame until it turned black. 

The cigarette was lit next. He took a drag. Let it out again. Kept one eye on Jet. "It looks bad. I don't have the Doc's make-better spray. This is all I have." 

"Do it."

"I could get help--"

"We're stuck in the middle of the desert. I made sure we landed as far from any cities, towns, or trade routes as physically possible. You're a walking target the minute anyone sees you. Faye's nowhere and she wouldn't know how to do this neither. Nobody's coming. Do it." Jet hesitated. "I trust you."

Spike wordlessly handed him the bottle. Jet took it, slammed down a good portion of the remainder, and handed it back. Spike upended it over the wound. Jet bit down on his metal hand so he wouldn't scream.

***

"Shin?" 

"Julia." He was in his car and driving, even if he couldn't decide on a destination. Too many choices, not enough knowledge of the outcomes. He saw his apartment in his mind. All the remnants of his life, arranged carefully in neat stacks. One for Hannah and one for Yoko and one for Omar... 

"I need you to do something for me."

"Anything. But first you need to know." He ground his teeth down on hot tears that refused to flow, but still felt awful and wrong. "Vicious has...he's head of the Red Dragon now. You need to run. Julia. He wants you dead just as bad as the Elders did. 

"What?" Her voice was weak and quavery.

"He had...allies. They..." He broke off. "It doesn't matter. You need to _go_ , Julia. Before it's too late."

He heard her swallow. "Thank you, Shin. For telling me."

"What do you need?"

***

Julia ended the call and looked around. Faye was standing flat against the wall, gun out, one eye peering through the edge of the blinds. Annie was somewhere in the back, packing for a surprise extended visit to her son and daughter-in-law on Ganymede. Julia stood up, stretched out her back, and came around to stand beside Faye. "See anything?" she asked.

"I see two, three people." Faye angled her head slightly. "Maybe more on the rooftops. It's hard to tell. The weather got bad _fast_."

"We need to get out of here soon, don't we?" Julia leaned back against the wall and considered all the pieces of the day. She lit another cigarette, then hoped it wasn't visible from the outside. 

"Yeah." Faye turned away from the window, looking grim. "Good phone call?"

"No. Did you hear?"

"A little." She inclined her head, looking as if she were waiting for more.

Julia exhaled and watched the smoke disperse into the shop. "Vicious won. He's in charge now." 

"Won?" Faye's eyes gleamed at the corner of Julia's vision. "Interesting choice of words."

"Yeah, I guess."

"And what did he 'win?'"

"The Syndicate."

Faye shrugged her shoulders. "So let him have it."

"You don't understand." Julia turned and looked at her. "If Vicious owns everything, we will _never_ be safe. Annie will be dead by morning. Spike will--" She broke eye contact. "Spike will probably do something stupid. I'll be hunted down. Shin's as good as dead. And you?" She flicked the end of her cigarette and looked sideways at Faye. "If Vicious finds out _you_ gunned down his men? You'll _wish_ you were dead."

Faye was avoiding her eyes, now. The droplets of water running down the window reflected across her face in trails of light. "So what do we do?" 

"Damned if I know." That was a lie. She tried again. "I asked Shin for a distraction. That'll give us enough time to get away and hide out somewhere. Form a plan there."

"Okay, fine." Faye crossed her arms and walked off towards the back. "When do we leave?"

Julia adjusted her gaudy new headscarf. She took off her sunglasses, put them on a rack, and picked out a new pair. "When? Now, if possible."

***

By the time Spike broke off the end of the thread, every muscle in Jet's body was twitching and he was, for reasons even he didn't understand, swallowing down on some measure of hysterical laughter. That hurt. A lot. But it was over now. Anyway, he could handle it. Spike dropped the needle into the bucket, stood up, stretched, and walked away with it. Jet tried to shift around enough to see what he did, but his muscles were shaking and didn't want to move where he asked them to. He saw a few neat black stitches bisecting some angry as hell flesh. Okay. Cool. So he probably wasn't going to lose the leg. He could live with that. 

Spike dumped the bucket--needle and all--down the toilet, then found a sink and washed the blood off his hands. He glanced at himself in the mirror. Splashed some cold water over his face and let a deep breath out through his nose. A moment or so later, he sat back down in the common room and gently lifted Jet's leg. Jet reached over and handed him the roll of gauze. He took it wordlessly and started wrapping.

"Hey."

Spike paused in his wrapping and looked up.

Jet quirked a tired-ass grin at him. "Thanks. For doing that. I appreciate it."

Spike's mouth moved a few times before he managed to find his voice. "Yeah, well, I know you'd do the same for me." He gave a one-shouldered shrug.

Jet made a show of thinking hard about that. " _Hell_ no, I wouldn't."

Spike snorted and finished bandaging Jet's leg. He tied off and tossed the rest of the bandages across the room. The roll bounced off something or other with a clatter. He didn't much care where it landed and didn't look. Once he was sure everything was secure, he deflated down onto the floor, back resting against the sofa. He looked back up at Jet. "You know, I appreciate that?" He pointed and then let his arm flop back down exhaustedly. "Find the one doctor living on the polar ice cap if you have to, I don't care. Just _don't_ perform amateur surgery on me!"

Jet rumbled with laughter, then carefully tried to scoot himself entirely off the table and onto the couch, only wincing a few times. More comfortable that way. His eyes closed almost immediately. "Anytime, brother. Anytime."

\--What did he just say? Spike looked over at Jet and tried to run those last words back in his head to remember what had jangled his brain about them, but he was too close to sleep and Jet was already snoring. 

***

Faye held the back door open for Julia and caught herself holding her breath at the same time. Julia looked different, that's for sure. The 'I <3 Mars' shirt was much too big for her and hid most of her curves, Faye noticed. The neon leggings were supernaturally unflattering and managed to mash her bottom half unrecognizably out of shape. Her beautiful blonde hair was bound up underneath that loud scarf and a pair of sunglasses covered half her face. Faye herself had borrowed a white caftan from Annie and another scarf from the shelf. The first part of Shin's distraction seemed to have worked--the men who were watching the shop earlier were at _least_ looking in another direction. 

But would it be enough?

She let the door go once the other woman was outside. They walked slowly and carefully out into the alley that connected one side of the block from the other. If all went well, their exit from the store wouldn't be noticed. They could step from the alley and become just another pair of Tharsis natives doing their errands. Julia had wondered about trying to sneak across the roof, but Faye had vetoed that. If someone saw them, it would be hard to run and they'd be instant colorful targets. 

So, instead, Faye glanced both ways down the alley as the door closed behind them. Seeing no faces, she hesitantly kept going. Everything in her told her to run, but she walked achingly slow. She clutched the large purse that she had taken and filled with the only belongings they could carry tight against her body. Nothing suspicious here, guys. She could see foot traffic crossing the entrance to the alley. Pretty soon they'd be in the clear.

To Faye's surprise, Julia stepped up alongside her and slipped her hand in Faye's. Faye tried not to react. Any reaction could draw attention. Instead, she quietly gulped and gave it an answering squeeze. 

Ten meters left. Then five. No reaction to their meandering stroll. They were already soaked through by the rain; every trickle down the back of Faye's neck felt like somebody staring. They reached the street. She tightened her grip and Julia's thumb brushed against the back of her hand in response. Four more steps and the two women merged with the crowd and disappeared completely.


	3. The train it won't stop going, no it won't slow down

"Hey!" Emerson hissed and elbowed his partner hard in the ribs. Palmer snorted awake and flailed out of his chair with a thump. Emerson hauled him back up by the collar. "There she is!" 

Palmer grabbed the binoculars and looked out the windshield. 

Emerson pulled him back by the collar again. "Keep down! She might see you!" 

The tiny little ship sat twelve berths down from the _Redtail_ and was tucked behind the large sign spanning the entrance to the lot that read 'Cos-Marina.' The place was jammed full of parked space vehicles today, and they had been lucky to even find a spot at all. The two men poked their heads carefully over the bottom edge of their window. The support for the sign was in the way, the rain was still coming down in sheets, and it was hard to get a good view from this distance, but there was definitely a slender figure with short black hair fumbling with the lock and then climbing inside the ship. Just like the tip-off had said would happen.  
Palmer focused the binoculars and squinted. "Are you _sure_ that's her?"

Emerson waved a confident hand and hit the levers for the engines. "Of _course_ I am!"

Palmer made a noncommital noise. "Didn't she have a nice rack in the pictures? I did not see _anything_ like a nice rack. And she was wearing yellow on the security footage."

"So she changed clothes. Duh. People _do_ that, you know. And, y'know, maybe she doesn't want people ogling her rack with binoculars and so she dresses down, you pig. Did you ever think of that?"

"Identifying features, man!"

Emerson gestures towards the ship. "I see a ship registered as the _Redtail_ by a Faye Valentine, known associate of Spike Spiegel. And I see a person with a _perfectly adequate_ figure, thank you very much, matching Ms. Valentine's description entering the ship. And _I_ say that _you_ now radio the boss and tell him we're following her back to the others, what say you?"

"I guess her ass is okay," Palmer mused as he hit the radio. 

Emerson waited for their subject to take off and get a decent distance away, then launched the _Lake_ in an attempt at a stealthy pursuit.

***

Edward climbs through the rafters and finds a good place to sit down. It's a big, big room, full of fancy computers and cool electronics and people who actually know what they're doing! They're silly people, though. Everybody wears the same clothes and the same shiny buttons and they try to get Ed to wear the clothes and buttons too. Ed doesn't _want_ to wear that stuff, though. It's weird and stiff and uncomfortable. So Ed just sorta stashes it in places when the people aren't looking. 

They were NOT happy about Ed coming up here, either. Everybody on this moon needs to loosen up! Except for maybe the noodly things. They seem pretty loose. But everybody else is all like "where are you going? You can't leave! You're not allowed in there! You can't use the supercomputer! The sandworms are attacking, we're all gonna die!" Blah blah blah.

So anyway, Ed's up here in the rafters hooking into the supercomputer. It's so _pretty_ in there. So many colors and pictures, and...ooh, what's this? This is probably worth a _lot_ of mushrooms... 

Ein barks. Ed jumps, flails and falls off the rafter onto the floor with a floomph that knocks the wind out of Ed. A second later Ed sits straight up. "Oh, yeah! We're going to Mars!"

Ed stands up and looks around. Everybody's suddenly running around and too busy to start yelling at Ed again, so that's good. There's a big sign with a list of places on the base. Ed puts Ed's face an inch away from it and hums while searching it. "Look, Ein!" Ed plants a finger on a listing that says 'Hangar.....A01 [AUTHORIZED USE ONLY]' and grins. "Eeee, that looks promising." Ein barks in what sounds like agreement. "Okay, let's go there!" 

Ed starts marching toward the stairs. Then goes down the stairs on hands and knees next to Ein. 15 flights, that's a lot of stairs! They're both gasping by the time they get from floor P to floor A. They flop to the floor at the bottom of the stairwell and rest for a minute. Ein gets up first and yips. Ed gets up and pushes the door open to let Ein through.  
The hangar has a BIG door. And a keycode lock. It doesn't take Ed long to short circuit that, though. The sliding door cracks open and Ed feels tiny as the two of them scoot through. 

There's a guy sitting at a security terminal on the other side. He stands up. He looks like the veins on his neck are either gonna burst or detach. He should maybe look into that. He looks at Ed and Ed grins wide. "What the _hell_ are you doing here? Did you bring a _dog_ in here? Are you authorized? You do _not_ look authorized. Show me your identification at _once_!" 

Ed whistles and walks past him. "Nah!"

Ed doesn't look back, but the guy _sounds_ like his neck veins are throbbing. "What are you _doing_?! Don't you know we're under attack?!" He's kinda screechy. 

"Nuh-uh!" Ed replies. 

"Yeah-huh!" The guy is following them, now. He's kinda stompy, too. "We're under attack from an alien life form, and you need to show me your authorization right NOW!"

"Nuh-uh!" Ed gets on tiptoe and peers at all of the ships. There's a blue one with a happy looking nose cone. That one will do! "Mating season for noodly things! They're getting rumbly. But friendly!" Edward climbs up the ladder and presses a few buttons on Ed's computer until the hatch opens. Ein jumps in. Ed follows. But looks back kindly at the security guy. "You might want to watch those neck veins though. They look kinda noodly."

Ed closes the hatch on the resulting shriek and presses a few more keys on Ed's computer. A countdown to open the bay doors starts up and the security guard goes running back to his booth before the air goes away. A couple of things that look kind of like a donut and a milk carton get sucked out of the hangar. Ed studies the controls. Pretty intuitive. Edward hits the ignition sequence and they zoom out into space! There's a few wobbles, but Ed gets the hang of driving really fast. Even if Ein doesn't seem to think so and is whimpering under the chair with his paws over his eyes. "Wheeeeeeee! This is FUN!"

***

"So. Let me get this straight." Vicious clasped his hands behind his back and stared at his cringing, sweating underling. "You were supposed to get information out of a known ally of my rivals. You send two of your--"

"Two of my _best_ men, I assure you--"

"Two _bumbling fools_ who are now dead and piled neatly in the corner. The shopkeeper is nowhere to be found. No one in the area heard or saw what happened, _despite_ the front window having been shattered to bits and at least two gunshots having gone off."

"To--to be fair, sir, break-ins and gunshots are not exactly _uncommon_ in this area--"

"Then perhaps you should work on the 'protection' part of your 'protection' racket, don't you think? Get out of my sight."

"Yes--yes sir." The underling fled. Pity. He appeared more intelligent than he actually turned out to be. 

"Vicious." Another of his men walked through the door, tinkling the altogether-too-cheerful bell. 

Vicious turned. A man nearly too tall for the door in a trenchcoat just a little too wide for his body stood at attention. Vicious' eyes flicked down to the man's freshly bruised and bloody knuckles and back to his face. Vicious...was not intimidated. Truly. "Scorpion."

The man's voice was gravelly and low. "One of the other shopkeepers had some information after all. She just chose not to reveal it without incentive." There was humor in Scorpion's eyes. "She heard two shots. She looked out the window and saw two women in the doorway of the newsstand."

" _Two_ women?"

"Yes, sir. She only saw them from the back. One had long blonde hair and a brown coat. The other one had short dark hair and..." Scorpion's eyes flicked down to the notepad in his hand. "...yellow shorts, apparently? Anyway, they entered and she did not see them leave. A couple of hours later, she said, the shopkeeper was picked up in a car. She did not get the make, model, or license plate." He shut the notepad.

Vicious stood there wordlessly for a moment as he ran that over with his head. He flicked his head sideways in acknowledgement and dismissal, and Scorpion left. He walked over to the bodies. Then he pulled up his communicator. Without waiting for an answer he ordered, "Change of plans. You are no longer engaged in passive surveillance. Drop them out of the sky. Reinforcements will be on their way to assist." He disconnected and let his gaze linger on the world beyond the window.

***

"Well, you heard him."

"Yeah." Emerson and Palmer watched the Redtail almost sadly for another minute. Emerson fingered the accelerator gently, closing the distance until they were almost within range to fire...

...And the _Redtail_ took off like a shot. 

" _Shit_." Emerson banged his fist down on the metal panel and tried to catch up. Their slow, careful pursuit was now a goddamned race. 

Palmer tried to line up a shot, but the smaller ship kept weaving in and out of his sights. "Do you think she knows about us?"

"Yeah, I think she knows about us, dammit. Where are those reinforcements?" Emerson bit off another swear and tried to angle around to the side. The _Lake_ had a low profile and plenty of firepower, but didn't offer a lot of engine boost for a chase like this. And the _Redtail_ only seemed interested in running.

Palmer sent off a message and waited for the reply. "Fifteen more minutes and they're on a course to intercept, as long as we can keep her heading in a westerly direction."

"Good," Emerson said tightly. He opened up the throttle as wide as it would go.

***

Jet woke up first. It took him a few blinks to figure out where he was, and about a dozen more to remember _why_ he had fallen asleep on the couch. Damn, that was a day. He shifted around. Everything was stiff. He'd lost track of time, but he must've been out longer than he thought. He heard the wind shift and start whistling in some faraway part of the ship. Right. Yeah. That probably wasn't good. He was _almost_ too screwed up to worry about what kind of repairs this was all going to have to involve, but he made himself sit up anyway. 

Spike was still sprawled and snoring on the floor next to the sofa. Jet swung over and tapped him on the shoulder with his good foot. "Hey." 

The snoring stopped. It looked like he was struggling to wake up. After thirty seconds or so, he sat sharply up with a gasp and his eyes popped open. 

"Uhhh hey." Jet repeated. He rubbed the back of his neck with a sheepish, confused smile. "Sorry to wake you...but I was getting pretty hungry and I thought you might want in on some food?" He looked around. "Where's my cane?"

***

"I had the _weirdest_ dream." 

Spike had followed Jet into the kitchen, which was pretty much unheard of. _Nobody_ could find Jet's cane, so he was sitting down while he cooked. Spike had dragged a chair in too, and was now straddling it backwards; his chin resting on his arms resting on the top rail. It was...it was like he had been out in the cold and snow and rain for a million years and had finally made it to a house and was slowly warming himself at a safe yet unexpected fire. 

"What kind of dream?" Jet had rolled his overalls down, put on an apron, and was stirring something that smelled really good in a frying pan. Spike's stomach crooned enticingly at it.   
He thought about it. "Have you ever felt so much pain in a dream that you woke yourself up with your own grief, but when you wake up, you can't make yourself understand that what caused your pain wasn't real? And you know it's _not_ real, but you can't make it go away, either?"

Jet looked back at him, then looked back at the pan. "You dreamed that she died, huh?" Knowingly. Like he'd been there a hundred thousand times. 

"Maybe," Spike said. He watched the cooker for a few minutes. "Can I tell you a story?"

"Sure." Jet scooted his chair halfway around so he could watch his meal and Spike at the same time.

Spike thought about it for a very long time. "It was something about a cat. And you said it was a good story."

"Okay." Jet was patient.

He thought about it some more. Took a deep breath in and out of his nose, feeling a stitch down one of his sides. Probably from the position he'd slept in. "There was a cat. Who lived a thousand lives and died a thousand deaths. And none of it mattered. He belonged to a thousand owners and didn't care about any of them. Until one of his lives, he ran away and became a street cat. And finally, _finally_ , he belonged to himself."

Jet nodded along, listening appreciatively. 

"And he met this beautiful white cat with emerald eyes and fell in love. And they made a home together and lived for a very, very long time. Eventually, the white cat grew tired and weak and sick, and finally died of old age. Then the cat who lived a thousand lives laid down beside her and died one last time too, having finally lived. And never got up again."

Jet smiled, eyes closed. He leaned back. "That _is_ a good story." 

Spike fumbled a pack out of his pocket, picked a cig out, and reached forward to light it on the gas. He finally got it lit and curled back up around the chair. "Maybe." 

Silence drifted over them companionably. Jet looked totally comfortable with it. Spike found a cold, hard knot in his stomach and tried to pick it loose. 

Jet put two plates down on the table and poured food into them. Spike turned around in his chair and tried to warm up with food, instead. He picked up his chopsticks. Some kind of bean sprout, mushroom, and egg stir fry. His belly squeak-growled, and he started stuffing his mouth. 

He looked up after a few minutes and Jet was watching him eat with something like approval in his eyes. It was both like and unlike his dream, and it itched at him uncomfortably. He gestured toward Jet's plate with his chopsticks and shifted a mouthful of food to the inside of his cheek so he could talk around it. "Aren't you going to eat?"

"Nah." Jet grinned at him and let out a breath of smoke. "No meat. I'm protesting." 

"Hmph. You're not missing anything." 

"Heh. So...are you going to go after her?"

Spike stopped. Then picked up a slice of mushroom between his chopsticks and studied it. He looked more alert, now, if also more grim. "Maybe." He ate the mushroom.   
"You're not sure?"

"No, I'm not sure of anything right now."

"Spike..."

Spike looked at his food, but kept Jet in the corner of his eye. "If I'm sure of anything, it's that Julia can take care of herself."

Jet blinked in acknowledgement of the name and filed it away. 

"And either the Syndicate will take care of Vicious the old-fashioned way, or they'll fight each other like snakes." He took another bite. "And I don't much care if any of _them_ are left standing afterwards."

***

"Julia, I'm not sure we can take care of this ourselves." Faye bit her lip and sat down on the edge of the bed. Old, rusty springs creaked underneath her weight. 

Julia had divested herself of scarf, sunglasses, and pants. She'd dropped them in the corner of the run-down motel room and stretched out on the bed. While Faye had taken a long, hot shower, she had grabbed a pen and a magazine someone'd left in the drawer and tried to sketch out the Syndicate headquarters layout from memory. It was hard; it had been years and she'd never been in it that much in the first place. She looked up when Faye sat down and gave her a scared, crooked grin. "If you have any other ideas, let me know. Please." 

Faye groaned and flopped backwards on the bed. Her towel dress untucked itself, but stayed in place. "We change our names, put on some fake mustaches, and go be bounty hunters for the rest of our lives?" She peeked at Julia and grinned back sheepishly. "Hey, it worked for me..."

"Well, yeah, but I'm not sure if I want to be..." Julia reached for her phone and pulled up the documents Faye's confederate had made up for her with one eyebrow raised. "...'John Jakob Jingleheimer Smith' for the rest of my life."

"Yeah...Ed's Ed." Faye shrugged. "If I can be Petula Arugula Hensen, you can pull that off."

"Hey, at least you have a woman's name!"

Faye leaned over and tapped Julia on the foot. "Oh my God. If there is _anyone_ in the solar system who can pull that off, it's you. You're that type of person who could wear a _paper bag_ and have people trying to copy you. You're just... _ugh_ , it just rolls off you. I hate it." Julia laughed. Faye folded her arms and pouted, but couldn't keep it up for long. She shuffled around until she was curled up at the bottom of the bed, on her side, looking up at Julia. Julia pulled her legs in to make room and looked back. "So." Faye mimed pulling another card from underneath her towel and tossing it at Julia. Julia laughed again and mimed catching it. "Friend."

Julia thought about it for a minute or two. She tucked the imaginary card behind her ear. "V was playing pool. I was his arm candy. I turned around, and there was this kid with wild eyes and wild hair. ...I like 'em wild. He gave me the most beautiful smile and asked if I wanted to play. I was bored, so I said yes." She sounded almost grudgingly happy. "He's good at it. Or was. Too damn charming, to boot. He hustled me out of almost five hundred woolongs." She wrinkled her nose sheepishly. 

Faye squawked. "I would've thrown a pool ball at him and ran! He _hustled_ you?!"

"I don't think he _meant_ to...well...okay...fine...I don't know, maybe he did." She chuckled again. "Or maybe he had to have an excuse to see me again. Anyway, it worked. The excuse for seeing me again. He didn't take the money, just offered me a rematch the next night." She paused. "Two weeks later I gave him the twelve thousand woolongs I owed him by that point and swore up and down that I would never play him for money again."

Faye squalled again and playfully slapped her on the ankle. "Pool ball! To the head! Solved a surprising number of problems for _me_!"

"Pssh. Hey, I was enjoying myself!" She put the drawing aside and crossed her arms loosely over her stomach. "But that was when V started to get...strange. He'd come back from Titan...but part of him never did, you know? It's like all the good parts of him died over there but the rest was still walking around. And...he got jealous when he learned it was another boy I was talking to. So he started coming with me. Turns out they knew each other a little from working together, and all of a sudden, it was the three of us. You know, Faye, it was really good? We were the right age to really enjoy running in a pack, and those two hit it off right away. Vicious was always too serious for his own good, and Spike had a silly side, and I could find trouble to get into like nobody else--we all kind of balanced each other out, and I think we all rubbed off on each other for the better. And Spike and Vicious started working together more in the Syndicate...eventually partners. I think. I heard people talking; saying they were joined at the hip, even doing...you know, the things they had to do in there. The things I tried not to think about. And even if Vicious didn't totally trust me, he trusted in _Spike_ , so...it was good. It was real good."

"And..." Faye tilted her head and pulled another invisible card out of an invisible pack. "Lovers?"

Julia turned on her side, rested her head on her elbow, and looked wistful. "One day it went wrong. I don't know what happened. It might have even been Vicious's fault. I didn't inquire too deep...you know?"

"I can guess, yeah," Faye replied softly.

"I found him. Outside. I don't know if he'd dragged himself there, or if they'd left him there, but I walked out the front door of my building, and there he was." Julia shuffled her handful of imaginary cards. "He'd been shot up full of holes and hadn't woken up yet. He needed someone to take care of him, and I was right there, so..." She swallowed. "He was different after. Not worse, but...more serious. Farther away. He...wanted out. And my God, I can't blame him."

"No. Of course not." Faye put her hand on Julia's calf and squeezed it sympathetically. Her hand felt almost burning hot after the cold rain outside. 

"Nothing... _changed_ between us, you know?" She looked to Faye like she could make her understand...and then towards the front window. "Something was always there. We just...either we didn't _know_ it was there, or we didn't want to act on it, but...it was there. And..it grew. Of course it did. It was only natural." She swallowed. "We didn't so much _fall_ in love as had it slip down over our heads long before we realized it. And it was _good_." 

Julia slid her feet off the bed abruptly and stood up. She grinned apologetically at Faye. "My turn for a shower, I think." She turned and walked stiffly across the room to the bathroom. She didn't turn back around, but she could feel Faye watching her all the same.

***

Emerson swore yet again. They were managing to keep up with Valentine, but not much more than that.   
Palmer fired another shot, trying to keep the ship headed in the right direction for the upcoming ambush. It didn't work and they both cussed up a blue streak. Palmer sent another message to the others with coordinates, and received yet another estimate of when they'd catch up. It was taking too damn long. Vicious was going to eviscerate them both. They _had_ to catch her eventually...

***

The Redtail slipped in and out of reach of the Lake, easily the faster and more manuverable ship. In the pilot's seat, Shin grinned to himself. He was a good distraction.


	4. this is where I miss you

"Hey."

Julia stopped in the doorway to the bathroom when Faye started talking. She didn't answer, didn't look around, just tilted her head slightly in acknowledgement.

"I woke up on an operating table three years ago with no memory, no family, no friends, no money to my name." Faye lay on her belly and watched Julia from the bed. "The first thing I ever knew was debt. Crushing, suffocating debt. The first man I ever met wanted nothing but to ride me hard and bury me under even more. The first and hardest lesson I ever learned was that the only thing about me that 'mattered' was whatever the next guy on the street could bleed out of me. So I stopped letting myself get bled. Somebody wants money from me? Fuck them. Somebody wants me to _be_ something for them? Fuck them even harder. And so I survive. I am _exactly what I need to be_."

She paused. Julia rested her hand on the door frame. Faye rested her arms under her chin and looked at the wall. "Couple of days ago, I got my memory back."

"I'm--"

"Let me finish." Then, in a softer tone, " _Please_ , Julia." 

Julia nodded and let her arm drop down. Faye continued on. "I remembered a family--I had parents who loved me. I had friends who cared about me. I had a future. I had a _place_. I _belonged_. And it's gone. All gone. So very long ago... And there's no hope of clinging to even a _piece_ of it." 

Faye slid off the bed and took a step forward with hands outstretched; her palms facing the ceiling. "I have lost so much more than you could ever imagine. I have _nothing left_. I am a red line on the universe's balance sheet, and there is nothing anyone or anything could do to repay any of it."

Julia finally turned and looked at her. "Faye..."

"I _don't want to die_. I don't want _you_ to die. I don't want _Spike_ to die. And tomorrow when you have your giant reckoning or whatever, I'll probably lose all three." She shivered. "Please don't make me lose you. Or him. Or Jet. Or Ed, or Ein, or...just... Not now. Not after all this. Not after everything. Okay?" She sounded like a forlorn child. "This is all I have...."

Julia finally-- _finally_ \--broke whatever spell was holding her in place and wrapped her arms around Faye. 

***

Shin dodged a very wild shot from the _Lake_ and accelerated just out of reach one more time. He grinned. He'd learned how to pilot a ship, sure, but he'd never had much chance to test his skill. But teasing the _Lake_ like this...he was holding his own and actually having a certain amount of fun. Maybe he should've taken on more missions involving flying...

Something beeped on his control panel. He wasn't sure what the indicator was. But he had a pretty good guess when a significant number of Red Dragon ships--he wasn't going to stop to count--flew in from all directions and hovered directly in his path.

"Oh, dear."

***

Vicious sprawled in a low, ornate chair. Two other chairs sat empty, flanking him on either side. The room was large, opulent, and empty. Some sort of private dining room. There was no food now. No other life. Not even his staff. 

Even his bird was gone. 

Vicious sat for what felt like a long time. Legs splayed out in front of him and hands steepled on his chest. Unmoving.

Eventually, he leaned forward. He delicately picked up an old cup from the dining table and threw it hard against the far wall.

***

" _Faye_!" Jet answered the call from the _Redtail_ in shock. "Where have you _been_? Spike said he called you, but--"

"Not Faye." A stranger's face grinned back at him apologetically. There was blood in his teeth. "Sorry."

"Shin?!" Spike breathed from behind Jet's shoulder. Oh yeah, the guy that helped them in the bar. He'd been too distracted to get a good look at his face. "What are you doing there?"

"Being a _good_ distraction," Shin replied, still grinning. "I normally wouldn't bother you like this, but I've already taken down about a quarter of these ships, and there's still, like, thirty of them left, so I don't think I'm going to get a better time to pass on this message." He broke off as something hit his ship from behind and his head jerked forward out of shot. 

Spike stood up abruptly. "I'm going. Get his coordinates." 

Jet turned in his chair. "Spike, wait--"

The _Redtail_ steadied out and Shin took a breath. "No, wait, listen first, _please_ , I--"

But Spike was already gone. "Take care of the ship!" He called back to Jet from the hallway. 

Jet grabbed hold of a cabinet and tried to pull himself up to standing. "You can tell me the message. I'm listening."

Shin swore a little under his breath. Then chuckled through his teeth. "Julia says she'll meet you-know-who you-know-where."  
"That's...not a message."

"It's the best I can do. I took precautions, but somebody might be listening in. I have to go. Stay safe." Another bloody grin and Shin disconnected.  
Jet felt it in his feet when the _Swordfish_ took off. He glanced at the wall like he could somehow see it even through the metal. He...sat back down again, picked up his chopsticks, and resumed eating. Food was getting cold.

***

" _Coordinates_ , Shin!" Spike's voice barked over the speaker.

Shin hurriedly sent them over. "You don't have to do this, I--"

"You don't have to be _here_!"

"Well, there's thirty ships right in front of me that would argue with you pretty hard about that!" He sent off another missile and hared off to the side. "Twenty-nine!"

"Hang on. You've got to hang on, and I'll be there in ten minutes!"

"Twenty-eight! No, _you_ should go! _Somebody_ needs to be around to take over from Vicious!" 

"What? What the _fuck_ \--I'm hanging up now!"

Shin laughed hysterically and accelerated straight into the path of another ship before firing at them. 

***

Faye sat on the floor and looked over the vague sketches Julia had made of the Syndicate's headquarters. "Oh, wow, these are...really not helpful. Couldn't you even remember for sure where the entrances are?"

"It's been so _long_ since I've been inside it. That's the best I could do. What about your hacker friend from before?"

"That's not a bad idea..." Faye picked up her phone.

***

Spike flew in and lit up the asses of the attacking Red Dragon ships with a firework display of gunfire, taking down several before they even knew he was coming. Some of them broke off to engage him, instead. He flew them straight through the center of the knot of ships still attacking the _Redtail_ , confusing them all. Same deal as with the Bebop earlier. Get them away from the most vulnerable, visibly injured ship and pick them off from there. "Hey Shin! I definitely don't see thirty ships here, are you blind?" _Keep him talking_...

"Don't worry, I left you plenty!" The _Redtail_ shot out and fired into Spike's trail of followers. He was right. Spike didn't feel like counting them, but there was certainly still a lot. Either Faye had pissed off the entire syndicate, or they didn't want Shin getting out with whatever message he'd gotten. Either one was a possibility. 

He swung sideways and took out a missile heading for Shin's tail. There was an art form to this. The kid wasn't doing badly, but he didn't have the art of it. And he was getting more erratic by the minute. Spike tried not to let it worry him. "You should get back to the _Bebop_ , let me handle this!" 

"I can't! Not without them following me! I--" An explosion hit the _Redtail's_ engine and Shin broke off.

Spike drew a line of fire straight through a handful of ships. "Your engine's smoking! You need to go! Now!"

"Can't!" Shin grinned through his teeth again on screen. "I'm still up in the air and that's gonna have to do for now!"

"You're an idiot!" Spike sent another volley through the ships and dodged again. 

***

Singing, singing, singing silly little songs--Edward is entering the atmosphere of Mars! Ein got braver and is sitting in Ed's lap happily as they navigate to the Bebop. Ooo, what's this? There's a _lot_ of ships over this way here--phone call, phone call, which to answer, the phone call or the ships? Why not both? "Faye-Faaaaayyye!" Ed gleefully shouts as Ed both answers the call and zoooooms over towards the ships! "Oooooh, one is Spike-Person and one is You-You!"

"Huh?" Faye looked baffled on screen. 

"Faye-Faye is fighting and calls Ed! Do you need help? Okay!" Ed tappity-tap-taps away and Ein barks along! "Wheeee! Ooooo...ohhhh, NOT Faye-Faye. Why'd you give your ship away, Faye-Faye?"

"I needed a distraction--did you say my _ship_ is in a _fight_ \--oh, no, _Shin_ \--!"

"It's okaaaaay! Their computers saayyyyy bye-bye!"

***

Spike was halfway through a roll when he realized the ship he was fighting had stopped...well...firing. He blinked. And looked around. One by one, each and every ship stopped firing and went still . Until _none_ of the ships were firing except for the _Redtail_. And even the very few that still had some sort of manual movement looked jerky and lost. "What the hell...?"

"Goodnight zipcraft, goodnight lasers!" Chanted a very familiar voice out of nowhere. "Goodnight to all the _Bebop's_ haters!"

Spike jumped. Suddenly, his comm screen blinked on into a closeup of Ed's grinning face. " _Ed_?!" His jaw dropped.

Ed waved and mugged for the camera again. "No computers, no way to fight! Enemy ships all say goodnight! Come on, let's gooooo!" A strange-looking blue MONO racer with what looked like a _lot_ of experimental design features--and was that some sort of satellite dish?--zoomed overhead. 

Spike drifted silently with his mouth open for a good twenty seconds while processing that. Then he leaned over the comm and yelled, "WHY THE _HELL_ HAVEN'T YOU EVER DONE THAT BEFORE?!"

***

Jet dragged himself to the hangar and just stood in the doorway, astonished, looking at the unfamiliar ship sitting in front of him. 

The windshield flipped up and Edward Wong Hau Pepelu Tivruski the Fourth squealed, pulled herself out of the pilot's seat and _launched_ herself from a solid twenty feet away straight into Jet's arms. A little corgi head popped up inside the cockpit and started barking happily.

Luckily there was a wall behind Jet, so he just slammed back into that instead of the floor. Just got the breath knocked out of him a little by the little monkey clinging to him with all four limbs. "He-hey, Edward!" He half-grinned and patted her back. "Where've ya been? We ate all the eggs your father left without you!" 

Ed burrowed into his shoulder so her words were a little muffled when she talked. "Faye-Faye said to Ed, 'Find where you belong.' And Father-Person said 'Do you want to stay with me now?' So Edward went all thinky thoughts and bad feelings and all muddled up mucked up funny inside and went to find Father-Person."

Jet's arms tightened around her and the edges of his mouth gradually drifted downward. "So, uh, did you find him?"

Edward shook her head and squirmed around deeper into his arms. Her response came from somewhere around his armpit. "Nuh-uh. Ed ended up on the satellite moon around Jupiter with the noodly things instead."

Someday, somehow, he was going to find that man, and deliver him a much-needed punch to the face. And _then_ maybe deliver him to Ed. Depending on whether she still wanted him around at that point. But he smiled for her anyway. "Noodly things, huh? _That_ sounds like a story. You're gonna have to tell me all about it. But first let's go check on Spike, yeah?"

"Okay!" She flipped herself down out of the hug and went racing off across the hangar. Ein jumped down and raced around her heels. Jet shook his head at them in wonder and followed along slowly. 

***

Spike released the towing cable from the _Redtail_ and Faye's-- _Shin's_ ship glided down and slid along the ground for about a hundred meters before coming to a stop. Spike landed nearby. They weren't _right_ up against the _Bebop_ , but they were close. As soon as his engine had stopped, Spike was out and running.

Shin was a lot lighter than Jet had been. It didn't take much to pull him out of the craft and lay him out on the sand. "Shin! Answer me!"

"Hey." Shin's answer was warm and drifty. He turned his head to the side. He coughed. Blood dribbled out of his mouth onto the sand. "Don't shout. I'm here."

"You're hurt, you're--"

"Yeah." Shin turned his face back to the sky. "Beautiful day, huh? Glad I got to see the sun." 

Spike moved to--to touch his shoulder, shake him out of this, _anything_ , maybe, but Shin's hand grabbed his. "Shin, don't talk--"

"Stop. Listen to me. She's waiting for you. You know where to find her."

Spike went to say something, stopped, then nodded instead. 

Shin shifted around to look Spike in the eye. "Promise me something?"

"Say it."

"Will you take care of Lin's family?" Shin's gaze drifted back up at the sun. Then he went completely still. 

Silence stretched on.

Spike finally stood up, turned, and walked back to his ship.


	5. Ice cold hands taking hold of me

Night fell.

" _I'll be waiting at the graveyard. By the graves. Not in them._ "

Julia walked a meandering path between the stones. The rain still fell in sheets. Her gun was in her hand. Her eyes gradually got used to the dark. She was shivering cold. He _had_ to come.

She saw a flicker of light in the distance. She raised her gun and quietly came closer. 

It was a lighter. A glowing cherry hung in the air over a park bench after the flame flickered out. _He said he'd be there..._

She held her breath and stepped out into the open. The lighter flickered back on. A familiar--but changed--face offered her a weary smile and a light.

She studied him for a long moment. Then she very carefully put her safety back on and lowered her gun to the ground. She took out a cigarette instead and gingerly sat down on the other edge of the bench. He held the lighter closer and she leaned in long enough to take him up on his offer. Then she sat back and they watched each other some more.

"Shin's dead." His words sounded harsh and hoarse after the long silence.

"Oh no..." Her own voice sounded weak and wavery to her own ears. _Get it together, girl. But poor Shin..._ "What happened?"

"He pretended to be a bounty hunter friend of mine in order to draw fire, which provoked an ambush. He put up a good fight, but there were too many for him. He managed to get down to the surface and died there."

"Oh, _Shin_..." She shut her eyes tight and covered her mouth. 

"That's what happens when you _use_ people, Julia."

It felt like a slap across the face, and she lost the war to keep her feelings contained. She let out a little noise and bent over in quiet, ugly sobs.

Several minutes later, she heard a rustle and felt something drape over her shoulders. She straightened back up and felt the fabric of a heavy coat around her. She made a soft questioning noise.

That old, familiar outline was standing in front of the bench, now. He had his back to her. "You looked cold." His voice didn't sound much warmer. 

She shivered again and made herself stand up. "I should go. I--"

"Don't." He turned around and she looked away.

Julia sniffed and wiped her face on the back of her arm. "What do you want, Spike?"

She recognized the silence. Recognized the maze of a mind that stole his answer. She'd learned how hard it was for him to trust anyone long ago...and she'd probably added to it in more ways than she knew.

So...she laughed. Or something approaching it. It was a ragged, rusty thing that pulled at her chest on the way out, but it crawled out of her. It wasn't funny. Not even near it. It was a release; nothing more, nothing less. And with it, all the dark thoughts, twisted-up feelings, and cruel regrets she'd been clinging to in anticipation of this day (and in memory of the aborted one from years ago) slithered back up her throat and flew out to disperse into the night. She let them go. All that remained was the memory of love and sadness. She looked at him, finally, and let out a deep, slow sigh like escaping air. "I wanted to come. That day."

"But you didn't."

"No." She took another breath and still felt the barrel of Vicious' gun on the side of her head--even so long after the fact. In some ways, this was the first time she'd felt it gone. She stepped forward and lifted one hand toward Spike's face. "I was supposed to kill you. It was all set up. Then I'd be free." She swallowed. Took one more step forward.

"So why didn't you?" He hadn't moved. Not even his expression.

"Why do you _think_ , Spike?" Her voice sounded so much more tired than she realized she felt. She stepped forward and placed the back of her hand on his cheek. 

He shut his eyes.

***

And opened them in a church, fist clenched around a bouquet of roses. He fires into the gunmen as they fire into him. Horrible little fireworks light up the darkness around him. He flicks the nasty little device in his hand and smiles.

***

And opened them in a bed, knowing that if he moves an _inch_ he will be in the most excruciating pain of his life. Off to the side, an angel hums.

***

And opened them with his back against a wall and ashes all around his feet, pulling his courage together to do the most terrifying thing he's ever done in his life. He smokes his last one and feels his life welling up around him. He thought he'd be more ready to say goodbye to it all. 

***

And opened them in a graveyard full of rain, Julia's hand on his cheek. He was pretty sure there was a question, but he'd be damned if he knew what it was. Instead of answering, he put his hand in her hair.

***

Jet was trying to fix one of the holes in the side of the ship when he saw the strange flickering light on the horizon. 

Fortunately, he'd found his cane somewhere during the repair work. He tossed his tools back down into the bin and curiously went to look.

When he got close enough, he was surprised to find the light was coming from a branch stuck into the ground as a makeshift torch. The dead body of the man that had helped them--Shin--was lying on the ground inside a half-circle of fist-sized rocks. Ein sat at the dead man's feet, mournfully howling.

While Jet was busy staring, Ed came back with another backpack full of rocks. She dropped it on the ground. Jet tried to get his words back as Ed carefully kneeled on the ground, pulled out a rock, and added to the circle she was making around him. 

"Ed, what are you _doing_?" Jet managed finally. 

"Making a grave!" she called back without stopping. As she hummed to herself and worked with no apparent hesitation or upset, it hit Jet with a shock-- _she knew what she was doing_. Judging by the skill and speed in which she was working, she had done this many times before. 

He blinked. And wondered when and who she had buried. Who taught her to do this. This abandoned, half-feral girl who was as comfortable crawling on her hands and knees as walking upright. And he looked at her, and felt...lacking, somehow. He wasn't a piece of shit. He knew what went into raising a kid. But he'd let her on board and immediately went nope, she wasn't his responsibility, he didn't want her on there in the first place.. And sure, maybe she _wasn't_ his responsibility. Maybe it didn't matter, in the end, who _was_ responsible. 

He dragged himself over and sat down on the ground next to her. She looked over at him questioningly. He picked up a rock and looked at her. "Show me what to do. Then I'll pile them on and you can go looking for more."

***

Faye peeled herself away from the shadows and joined the other two when they reached the cemetery gate. She gave a little nod to let them know she hadn't seen anybody, and gestured the way back down the road. 

They hadn't dared go back for Julia's car so they had to walk back to the motel. The rain was still coming down something awful and it was getting colder out. She wished they didn't have to take such a roundabout route, but it made sense to make sure they weren't being followed. It didn't stop her complaining, though. Although the black hole of silence between the other two didn't leave much room for conversation. Whatever went down in there, she guessed it must have been pretty bad. Oh well, at least they didn't shoot each other. 

She leaned against the motel wall as Julia fished out her key and scanned the lot behind them. She saw Spike take up a complimentary position out of the corner of her eye. She realized with a start that they'd been doing that unconsciously the whole way there--like twin bodyguards protecting precious cargo. Weird.

Julia opened the door and Spike slipped in before either of the two girls could react. Faye saw him survey the motel room and poke his head into the bathroom before coming back and giving them the all clear. Julia snapped on the light and Faye shut the door and locked it behind them. 

Now that there was light, she _saw_ Spike's gaze rove from the discarded ball of wet clothes in the corner, to the lone double bed, to Julia, and then back to Faye, with a really obvious question on his face. She rolled her eyes. "Oh, stop it! I can't tell if you're being a prude or a pervert or both. We didn't have the money on us for a double. That's it. And anyway, even if it _wasn't_ , I don't see how it would be any of _your_ business!"

If Spike's nostrils flared any harder, she'd have expected flames to come shooting out. "Well, maybe if you didn't spend all your money on the horses--!"

"Horses, shmorses. The fact of the matter is, we needed a place to lie low. And here we are." Faye flopped down onto the end of the bed and gestured expansively. "If you have any questions, concerns or comments, please kindly shove 'em where the sun don't shine."

"Faye, Shin's dead." Julia hadn't moved from the doorway. She had her arms wrapped around her middle like she was trying to literally hold herself together. "He got into a fight with the Red Dragon and...didn't make it."

Faye's face fell. "Oh, no. I'm so sorry! He seemed like such a nice guy, too." She looked at the floor for a minute. It felt like she was fighting herself, in a way; like she was trying to remember what it was like to be an actual human being who actually felt sad when people around her died. There--somewhere, down underneath all the scar tissue and damage, was a small little core of genuine regret that the guy on the screen who seemed like he'd had so much life in him just...wasn't going to be around anymore. She blew on that tiny little ember and held it close.

She heard a small sniff and looked up. Julia was crying. Faye glanced over at Spike, suddenly awkward for reasons she couldn't name. But Julia half fell onto the bed and curled up into a little ball. Faye instinctively reached out, rubbed her leg gently and made little shushing noises. _Poor little bird, what a sorry introduction into this life_...

"I'm...uh...going to head to the bathroom." Spike gestured with his thumb and backed away slowly from them. Faye heard him mutter something under his breath about 'emotional women' before the door shut and locked.

...Yeah. No. That wasn't something he was going to get away with. Faye slid off the bed and stomped over to the bathroom door. She raised her fist and started pounding on it. "SPIKE SPIEGEL, GET YOUR ASS OUT HERE AND HELP PLAN THIS ASSASSINATION LIKE A MAN!"

There was the noise of something getting knocked over and some frantic shuffling coming from behind the door. "DAMMIT, FAYE! I'M TRYING TO TAKE A SHIT IN HERE AND YOU'RE _NOT HELPING_!"

She kept pounding. "I DON'T CARE! YOU HAVE FIVE SECONDS TO REASSURE YOURSELF THAT YOU STILL HAVE A PENIS AND THEN YOU'RE EITHER GOING TO COME OUT HERE AND DEAL WITH YOUR FEELINGS LIKE A GROWN-ASS ADULT OR I'M GOING TO FUCKING BREAK THIS DOOR DOWN AND DRAG YOU BACK OUT LIKE THE SLIMY TOAD YOU ARE, IS THAT UNDERSTOOD?" 

Faye heard a small, tinkling laugh underneath the yelling and pounding and turned to look. Julia's face was still wet and puffy, but her eyes were shining...

***

Laughing Bull dreamed of a star falling. 

He dreamed he gave a cup of coffee to a young man who walked so long and so often in the company of Death that it stared out of his eyes and twisted his smile. In the dream, unlike life, it had twisted his body too. A withered hand slipped out from underneath a blanket to take the mug from Laughing Bull's hand. The man's other hand was strapped tightly to his body with wires. The blanket shimmered with stars, and Bull gasped when a corner of it fell with his movement, sending a small part of the heavens crashing to the earth. 

He felt afraid, and he acknowledged that fear. 

The thing that Swimming Bird was trying to turn himself into did not even notice. 

Bull steadied his mug with both hands and took a long sip. _Death_ is nothing to fear, he told himself. Even as he understood that what sat in front of him was not Death, only a man's tortured soul.

The thing smiled sadly. "Do you think today is the day I leave?" Its voice was both there and not there. The pulse of it echoed wistfully in the air between them. 

"I dreamed I saw a star fall," Laughing Bull answered politely. "Perhaps it was yours."

His left eye was the vacuum of space itself. His right eye was shut tightly and pierced by silver wires that traced the contour of his skull. "I was killed once before," he thrummed in the air between them. He stood, then, with the clacking of a thousand bones. Laughing Bull's eyes followed him upward...and upward...and the blanket fell off Swimming Bird's shoulders, sending the stars careening...

Laughing Bull's eyes popped open and he sat up in his bed with a gasp. He threw the blankets off and walked outside. He looked up. The stars were all in their places. He had a moment to deeply regret the triple-size chalupa he'd eaten in bed before a single star shot across the sky. He wondered...

Tonight would bring an ending. Whatever ending that may be.


	6. The Real Folk Blues

The lobby was full. Beyond the normal business being conducted that night, some very _abnormal_ transactions were being arranged. The transition of power from the Van to Vicious was not going as smoothly as first thought. Discontent was rising through the ranks, and the men left at the top proved incapable of quelling it. Some were trying their best to smooth everything over; others were forming quiet alliances and subtly trying to open up the cracks. If one coup could successfully go down, perhaps another one was possible...

No one even noticed yet another figure come through the front doors until he kicked a live grenade into the center of the room and bolted for the escalator. 

On the top floor, Vicious sat carefully down on his new...'throne' was perhaps the best word, although he felt uncomfortable with the connotations of it. He'd had a new chair befitting his stature installed and the other two seats removed completely. 

He watched the room laid out in front of him, a strange feeling crawling up his spine. Tonight was to be an ending, he sensed. 

_Finally_.

Spike hid himself flat on the escalator's rising stairs as confused gunfire rained off the (surprisingly bulletproof--what the hell, was that part of the _design_? Who even knew with the Dragon) balustrade. He pulled a small wad of plastic explosives out of his pocket and stuck it to the side. His pulse was so strong he felt it in his teeth--every beat reminded him that he was alive, every slug hitting that wall sent his adrenaline high soaring. 

The escalator reached the top and Spike ran, using the glass railing of the mezzanine as cover on his way to the elevator. This proved much _less_ bulletproof than the escalator (budget cuts?? New contractor??) and Spike threw himself to the ground as his only protection shattered around him. He made himself the absolute smallest target possible until he heard what felt like a sufficient number of footsteps running up the escalator behind him. He pulled the detonator out of his pocket and shook hands with the explosives he'd stuck to the wall. In the resulting confusion and smoke, he booked it to the elevator and slammed his hand down on a button, any button. 

He pressed himself against the wall next to the elevator door, ejected the clip out of his gun, and shoved in a new one. He took a deep breath and pulled one more grenade out of his pocket. Last one. It would've been nice if he could've gotten back to the _Bebop_ one more time to stock up, but he was stuck with what he had. Still, if the rest of this went as smoothly as the first floor, it probably wouldn't be a problem. 

A small crackle came from his comm and he pulled it out of his pocket. Ed's grinning face was _right there_ and he jumped slightly. "Top floor, top floor! New throne room, new throne room!" 

Spike snorted. "He made himself a _throne room_? Figures." Ed's face winked out, replaced by a rotating floor plan. One large room at the top flashed yellow. Spike committed it to memory, then shoved it back into his pocket. 

The elevator door dinged open to a chorus of gunfire muzak. _Great_. Of _course_ the scene downstairs wouldn't go unnoticed. He slapped the button for the top floor and the doors closed again. At least he wouldn't have to wade through that slaughterhouse.

Vicious took a great breath and stood. The air danced around him with potential energy. It felt alive, like the last possible second before a lightning strike. He stepped forward.

The elevator ( _finally_ , that was a long ride) opened again, this time to an empty corridor. Word hadn't caught up to this floor. Or Vicious kept everybody off because nobody could stand him. Or there were ten dozen asshats climbing twenty flights of stairs as fast as they could without passing out from the effort. But he didn't stop to think that hard about it. He bent over as he ran, keeping as small a target as possible. He bit down on the pin of his last pineapple. He hit the doors running and threw the grenade forward as hard as he could. _Hello, old friend_.

The room shook with the blast and Spike ducked behind an outcrop of wall, shielding his face with his elbow. He stepped forward as the smoke began to clear.

"So. You're finally awake." Vicious unfolded himself from the rubble that had somehow protected him. He stood at the top of the stairs, looking down at Spike. Something both mocking and pitying in his expression. "I told you before, Spike--I'm the only one who can kill you and set you free."

Spike grinned up at him. Vicious matched it tooth for tooth. "Those words apply to you as well, Vicious." Spike spat out his name like an insult. "Either way, it's going to end here." He raised his gun. Smoke and sweat stung his real eye something mad, but his artificial one didn't give a flying fuck. He got off a shot just as Vicious dived, and was rewarded with a flash of red in the air. He couldn't tell what he hit. He ran up the stairs, felt pain blossom in his left arm--he glanced down to see a throwing knife lodged in his shoulder, Vicious must not be that hurt--and rolled with the momentum as he hit the top. 

He somersaulted back to his feet and tossed off another shot, but it went wild. Vicious ducked and whirled around, Spike bringing his gun up to bear just in time to catch the edge of the flying sword on the barrel. They locked eyes as their weapons locked. Vicious tried to bear down with his strength and Spike pulled the trigger on a couple of shots, risking the recoil. One missed and one nicked Vicious on the cheek, but Vicious used the moment to his advantage, disengaged, and a flash of his sword opened a red line on Spike's knee. 

There was a half second's pause. Vicious growled and wheeled around again, this time set on disarming Spike. He succeeded--but lost his grip on his own sword while levering Spike's gun out of his hand and both weapons went flying through the air. 

Vicious's boot found Spike's gun an instant before Spike dropped to the floor and grabbed the hilt of his sword. Somehow, even as he kneeled there in front of Vicious, Spike was still giving him that feral, wild grin. "Julia..." Spike growled. Still smiling like he was toying with the man.

Vicious grinned back at him. And then his grin faltered as he felt something hard press into the side of his head. 

"How does it feel?" Julia's voice was warm velvet in his ear as she slipped her left arm around his neck from behind. He heard the slow, deliberate click of the safety against his right ear. He went still. 

" _How does it feel_?" she repeated. Vicious closed his eyes and went back to a day with the smell of flowers on the breeze: Julia and her lover had made plans to be his Brutus, and he finally-- _finally_ \--felt like he had got through to her. Or so he thought at the time. 

Julia shook his neck with her elbow and pressed the gun harder against his head. Her eyes swam and she hissed. "Do you _see_ now? Do you _understand_ what you did to me?" She shook him again. She heard a sharp noise from Spike, but she was too focused to pay attention. 

Vicious was, however, paying attention. He saw the snap in Spike's eyes when understanding hit. Saw the last bit of his self control start to shred. _Good_. "That was different, my dear," Vicious purred, and reached up to stroke the barrel of the gun with the fingers of his right hand.

"Different? It's _not_! You did this! You _did this_ to me! You're a _monster_." Julia's voice came from somewhere deep and hurting and old. "Do you _understand_ now, you abusive piece of shit?"

"It's different," Vicious insisted. His hand slowly stilled. 

" _How_?!"

"Because I know _you_ won't pull the trigger on _me_." Vicious abruptly yanked down on the barrel. Julia fired uselessly--and then screamed and fell backward, clutching at the throwing knife that had suddenly buried itself deep in the palm of her hand.

Vicious felt a single moment of satisfaction at that sound before he lunged for the gun on the floor.

Spike surged upward at exactly the same instant. They met in the middle and froze, arms wrapped around each other in a twisted embrace.

A long moment of frozen stillness followed. 

One last peal of thunder announced the end of the very long storm. 

And Vicious crumpled to the floor, his own sword buried to the hilt in his heart. 

***

Spike staggered to the top of the stairs. Blood soaked the front of his coat. He clutched his stomach like he was holding his guts in by hand. 

The remaining men of the Red Dragon gathered in a half-circle at the base of the stairs. He gave them a dreamy smile. Silence fell, and it felt almost...holy. He thought of Julia's face. He smiled again. He pointed his finger at the crowd, still smiling, and said, "Bang."

And slumped to the ground. 

***

Eventually, the shock wore off, and the men rushed past the crumpled body of the man on the stairs, looking for their leader in the aftermath of this strange and sudden attack. 

The staircase stood empty and silent.

A solid minute later, Spike cracked one eye open. Then the other. Then lifted his head slightly to make _absolutely sure_ no one was around. Good. Then he stood up stiffly and brushed himself off. He studied the bloodstain he left on the stairs; it was good enough. In the confusion everyone'd probably just assume someone else had carted off the body.

He was getting to be an expert in faking his own death, apparently. 

Satisfied, he tottered off to the elevator.

They were waiting at the loading dock for him this time. No need for the front, now that he'd already made his combined grand entrance and distraction so Julia could sneak in the back entrance. (And back out again.)

He slumped in the doorway as the first rays of sunrise hit his face, and grinned. Faye was sitting in the pilot seat of the _Swordfish_ , which was parked up against the dock. The cockpit was open. Julia was crammed in beside the seat, bandaging her own hand. They'd just have to figure out on the fly if they could fit three people in there. He bet they could.

Faye finally saw him and waved. He didn't wave back--he was too busy smiling; he could feel it on his face. He stood up tall. He let himself take a long, satisfied stretch. And then he _ran_. He hit the edge of the dock and jumped, hard as he could, toward the most beautiful ship in the universe.


	7. Epilogue 1: Love is a Lesson to Learn in Our Time

Julia stretched her hand. She clenched it in a fist, then stretched out her fingers again. There was minimal scarring. Just a thin line down the center of her palm, and several smaller marks where the doctors had had to go in surgically and fix all the tendons back up. She wiggled her fingers again. She couldn't quite move the second and third fingers independently of each other. But it was so much less than she _could_ have lost that she couldn't bring herself to really mind. 

She felt a thump next to her and looked up. Faye was perched on the edge of the hospital bed, swinging her feet and grinning at her. Before she could say anything, Faye offered her a wrapped bouquet. 

She took it. "Hi, Faye!" She held the soft-looking purple blooms to her face. "Mm, these smell _wonderful_. Ganymede orchids, right?"

Faye shrugged one shoulder. "I think that's what the florist said. I don't know too much about flowers. Spike got you some too, but I guess I shouldn't ruin the surprise." 

"Well, thank you. I _love_ them." Julia smiled and laid them on the bedside table. She'd have to ask the nurse for something to put them in. 

"How's the hand?" Faye leaned over to look.

Julia did a little bit more finger flexing. "Pretty good. I mean, it's not at 100 percent. But there are only so many surgeries I want to put myself through, you know?"

"Oh, _tell_ me about it." Faye chuckled and nudged her with her shoulder. "Welcome to the wild world of outrageous medical debt!"

"Ugghhh, don't _remind_ me." Julia fell back to the bed and covered her eyes dramatically with the back of her hand. "It's going to take me _forever_ to pay this thing off." She laughed dryly.

Faye clicked her tongue. "Weee- _eeell_."

Julia peeked up at her. Faye was looking innocently at the ceiling. "'Well?'" It was really hard not to smile when Faye was around.

"Well, there _is_ this 50,000 woolong bounty we're after..." Faye pulled up a picture of a scruffy looking man with the name Eric Zimmerman underneath and held it over Julia's face. "It seems to _me_ that one fifth of that bounty would be a pretty good start..."

Julia bit her lip, smiling. She thought about it. Then she sat back up and shifted to look at Faye. "All right, I'm in." 

" _Great_." Faye stood up, reached over, and slung a bag into Julia's lap. "Your street clothes are in there. Jet and Spike are downstairs distracting the duty nurse. You've got five minutes, girl, let's _go_!" Faye reached over and grabbed her hand. It was cool and dry and somehow perfect. Julia laughed in wonder and let herself get pulled along.

Three minutes later they were running for the exit, hand in hand.


	8. Epilogue 2: Call her green and the winters cannot fade her

"Okay, so you want to look for branches like this to trim back."

"Like _this_?" Ed touched a different branch with her clippers.

"Not quite." Jet pointed back at the first branch. "Do you see the damage? I can see where you thought they were similar, but right now we're mostly just looking for ways to get these little guys healthy again."

"Ohhhhh okay!" Ed bounced in her seat. 

Jet grinned. "Do you want to do the honors?" He moved slightly. He'd...lost a lot of his garden in the dogfight. But...this was maybe okay.

"Yeah!" Ed squealed and clipped off the damaged branch with gusto. 

"You're gonna be good at this, I can tell!"

Ed giggled.


	9. Epilogue 3: With his head full of pool hall pictures and songs from the hit parade

"And, uh, this is a bed that comes down off the wall--here, let me show you." Spike brushed past her and fumbled with the bunk latched to the wall. Julia stayed in the doorway, hands clutching her small bag of belongings and watched. "There we are," he said after lowering it. The room was small, but she'd grown up in way smaller, more crowded quarters. A few homey touches and it would be pretty nice. Besides, her roommates promised to be pretty spectacular. 

Spike stepped back and stood awkwardly with one hand on the back of his neck. She tried to think of something to say. "So...have you been living here long?" She asked finally, moving to sit on the edge of the bed. 

Spike shrugged, like it was somehow no big deal. "Three years, going on four. Why?"

"Uh, because I haven't _seen_ you in as many years and want to know what you've been up to?"

"Oh. Yeah. Um. Not much." He gave her a sheepish smile.

"So...you became a bounty hunter."

"Yeah."

"And you live on a spaceship now."

"Seems that way."

"With two roommates, a teenager, and a dog."

"They...sort of planted _themselves_ here, but yeah."

"They...just showed up on your ship?"

"Well, it's _Jet's_ ship. But other than that."

It was like pulling teeth. Julia let it go. It would all come in time. She pulled one knee up to her chest and rested her foot on the bed. She flexed her toes. They were like strangers now. It had been so long and they had changed so _much_... But...she was looking _forward_ to that. Getting to know the man he'd become. It was a present she'd never dared hope for, and she was going to take her time savoring the unwrapping. She lifted her head and smiled slow and sultry. "So...d'you still play pool?"


	10. Epilogue 4:  Lend me your ears and I'll sing you a song (and I'll try not to sing out of key)

Faye flopped down on the sofa. Her back ached and the rest of her was tired as hell. Somewhere, the others were getting to know the new convert. She reached a weary hand over to the side table, but the magazine she'd left there was gone. She frowned.

Out of nowhere, a red-haired cannonball hit her dead on the stomach, knocking the breath out of her with a tiny "oof!" She flailed until she got her air back, then stilled, looking at the grinning baboon still perched on top of her. She whuffed out a sigh and reached up to ruffle that messy hair. "So you made it back all right, huh? Jet said you took off and came back with a spaceship."

"Uh huh!" Ed rocked back and forth, looking incredibly proud of herself. "Ed stole it from the guys studying the noodly things!"

"Noodly things? You mean like ramen?"

"Nuh uh, Ed means like sandworms."

" _Sandworms_?" Faye tried to sit up, but it was a losing battle. "What the heck are sandworms?"

Ed got off her, then, and ran for her computer. Faye was halfway to a sitting position when Ed jumped back on top of her, knocking her flat back onto the couch. Ed held the computer out for her to see and grinned. "See? Noodly things!" 

Faye scanned it, not really paying attention...then suddenly pulled the computer closer. It was some sort of field report with 'classified' written all over it. Only Ed... "Large organisms most closely resembling the now-extinct Earth species _microchaetus rappi_ have been identified and appear to be native to Europa..." She looked up at Ed with moon-eyes. "You found _aliens_?!"

Ed nodded rapidly. She reached over and hit a key and a picture popped up. It looked like a really, _really_ big worm. Faye didn't know what she was expecting to see, but...yeah. Big worm. "Isn't it cool?" asked Ed gleefully.

"So that's what aliens from another planet not the result of terraforming look like. _Wow_." She shivered a bit because they were _worms_. But Ed was right, it was kind of cool. She handed the computer back and looked up at Ed. "So that's what you were doing? You left the Bebop to go check one of Jupiter's moons for alien life? Only you, Ed..."

Ed shook her head. Then looked down and grabbed one of her own feet. "Ed was looking for the Father-Person." 

"The father-person? You mean your father?"

Ed nodded sadly. "Ed was looking for where Ed belongs. Like Faye-Faye said."

"Aw, I'm sorry." Faye reached up to stroke Edward's hair comfortingly. "I didn't mean you had to pack your bags and leave right away."

"Ed knows." 

"And...did you find it? What you were looking for?"

Ed looked around. She studied every corner of the room like she was formally weighing it. Then she nodded. And flopped down on her side on top of Faye and snuggled in. "I think so."

"Well... _good_." Faye shifted her weight, stilled, and wrinkled her nose. "Hey, Ed? I probably don't want to know this, but why is the fabric of this couch all stiff and weird?"


	11. Epilogue 5: The Weight

"Going somewhere?" 

Spike's hand froze on the door of the _Swordfish_ , but he didn't look back. "Got a problem with that?"

Jet shook his head and crossed his arms. "You're a free man, Spike. And I've got no say over where you go." An implied ' _but..._ ' hung in the air between them. 

Spike's shoulders tightened. And then loosened. And then tightened again. 

"There's food on the table." Jet continued on. "With actual meat. And a lady--okay, two ladies, if I'm reading the room right--who might just want to share it with you."

Spike slowly shifted his weight to lean on the door, still not looking back at Jet. "Vicious is dead."

"Yeah."

"And...you're right about those things."

"Uh huh."

Spike's hand clenched on the door. He glared at the ship. "And...I'm _not okay_."

"I know."

"I thought I would be, but I'm _not_."

Jet nodded slowly. "You thought it would be this one big thing, and when it was over..."

"Everything would be sunshine and roses."

"Uh huh."

Spike chuckled through his teeth. "And maybe it really is."

"Except..."

"Except the inside of my head is still a black hole." Spike's voice cracked. "You don't--you don't know what it's like in there. And I don't think you _want_ to know."

"Try me." 

Spike hesitated...then lost the battle with himself and looked at the floor. "Or maybe this is all still just a fucking glorious dream and the real shit is still about to go down."

"Nnnah, I don't think so." Jet's voice was easy and light. "Think I'd know if I was part of somebody else's daydream." 

Spike shrugged one shoulder like he wasn't ready to let go of the possibility _that_ easily. "It's still a fucking nightmare, though."

"If that's the way you have to look at it." Jet let the silence slide for a little while, then nodded at the ship. "So you _could_ go off. Or you could go back in, sit down, have a bite to eat, sleep it off." 

"Look, I can't just--"

Jet held out a hand to shush him. "And _in the morning_. I call this shrink I know who used to work with the ISSP. If he can screw the heads back on like a hundred different cops, he can at _least_ help you sort some of your bullshit into neat little piles."

Spike snorted. Then shook his head. "I can't."

"You could, though."

Spike...well...he tried it on. Struggled with it for a little while. Then shook his head almost reflexively.

"Okay." Jet upnodded. "Go. Find yourself. We'll be here when you're ready to come back home."

Spike lingered. _Home_... "You make this all sound so easy, you know."

"It's easier than you think."

Spike let that simmer for a minute. Then nodded, twice, and clambered into the spaceship. 

Jet stepped back behind the barrier before the airlock opened. He leaned against the wall and watched as the Swordfish took flight into space.


	12. Epilogue 6:  Always keep a sapphire in your mind

Faye flopped next to Jet with a huff and held up the wall with him as they watched the _Swordfish_ fade out of view. "Five thousand woolongs says he's back in a week."

Jet held out his fist without taking his eyes off the view. "You're on."

Faye bumped it with some sort of sixth sense, eyes still locked on the zipcraft getting smaller in the distance. Until it was just a gleam of bright light, getting fainter and fainter until it finally faded out.


End file.
